Datta Dayadhvam Damyata Shantih Shantih Shantih

After The Goldrush

Although I’m not lying in a burned-out basement. I’m sitting up in a water-damaged basement. I don’t feel like getting high, but I would like some relief from the pain of the latest kidney stone, a small fellow who decided to make his presence known this morning. Until he showed up I thought i had some serious indigestion. Well, I didn’t. But I suppose it’s nice that either the AI disorders or the stones have me so conditioned to the place where I can confuse a kidney stone with indigestion. Anyway. Enough with the whining; it does seem like all I do of late is whine. But in reality I’m not whining so much as sitting back staring bemusedly at the bits of chaos my life is splintering into and wondering at the kaleidoscopeness of it all. It’s absurd and funny and sad and real all at the same time.

Anyway. I wasn’t coming here to whine. I was coming here to ask what the bloody hell is up with folks. Earlier this week one of my Christian writer friends reported that a woman in her writing forum declared that she was only buying books by non-Christians from the Used Bookstore so that non-Christian writers wouldn’t profit from her and then spend the money on non-Christian things. (Like food, I presume.) Then this morning another Christian writer friend came to Facebook seething because when she approached an acquaintance for employment for a non-Christian friend in dire straits she was told that this man “only helps Christians.”

This little light of mine….hide it under a bushel? NO!

Maybe everyone else forgot that song. Maybe they were too busy singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” It seems like we’re marching as to war everywhere. That’s what this “culture war” has done. It’s turned the open arms of Christ into a sort of martial arts combat stance.

I’m reminded of this book I just finished reading, set in the Florida wetlands. The characters have a ranch which is threatened by a developer’s housing project. Much of the book centers on contretemps between the two, while the rest of the book glories in praising the old Florida of Cross Creek. The rancher was the hero, the developer the cad.

I couldn’t help wondering whose land the rancher took.

We’re acting like that, those of us who are so thrilled to be in the Jesus Club that we don’t want to taint it with the heathen. We’ve gotten our gold. Now we want everyone else out of Deadwood. We’re lying in our burned out basements, the full moon in our eyes. I guess we’ll be flying our silver spaceship to a new home in the sun one of these days. We chosen ones with the colours flying all around us, deaf to the children crying outside our perimeter of safety.

18 Responses

That is never off-topic. It’s always a good time to listen to ATGR. As long as you either skip “Southern Man” or take a bathroom break then or something….

But yes. That’s one of the best albums ever. Ever. The title track is one of the songs for which I obsessively collect alternate versions and covers. (Like Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah–which I did before it was everyplace and Raglan Road–which I did not do before it was everyplace.)

I should also add that as obsessively as I collect those covers I am completely driven nuts whenever they change the second verse’s lyric. The version with Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Rondstadt changes “felt like getting high” to “felt like I could cry”. It completely changes the meaning and nuance of the song. That makes me sad. I felt like I could cry.

As someone who has been burned by extreme Christians in the past, I felt it was quite an effort to muster up all my remaining shreds of faith and suggest to a few people that my friends, who are open to talking about God, might get more interested if they received help from the direction of the church. To be rebuffed in this manner disgusted me. I am ashamed to be associated with a religious attitude that does this kind of thing. However, the other friends I talked to are not like that, thank goodness… maybe one of them will be able to help out.

Considering that these days being a devout Christian has less societal approval than being a stripper, sex-columnist, or pot smoker, its surprising how little push back like this we have seen. I somewhat disagree with your examples. The first one makes little sense unless she is buying something she has to read for class and she dislikes the author’s views. Otherwise, why bother? When Orson Scott Card is hounded off projects due to his opposition to SSM in the public sphere, it’s hard for me to get worked up over the reverse. But it’s more honest not to read his books at all if you can help it.

The second I have to say your friend doesn’t have a demand on the man. The man may have had bad experiences with friends of friends; he’s the only one who knows whether or not he can do it. He may do it from a lack of charity, or he may do it because the last three non-christians he helped went bad on him, stole from his business, or drove away customers. No one has a demand on Christian charity; we have to respect other people who don’t want to give, because it isn’t something to compel.

What kind of annoys me is that the same people who often denigrate Christians turn around, and try to slap us with “Oh you aren’t acting Christian” whenever we do protest in any meaningful way. Not that you are at all! But many unbelievers somehow berate us for believing the Bible and acting on it, and then expect us to believe the Bible and act on it in the ways that benefit them. I think western Christians do pretty well at not reacting to this. One could look at Russia to see a far more worrisome kind of reaction.

Is it? I see many movies about lovable stoners. I see few about lovable Christians. If anything if you see a religious fundamentalist, he’s usually the bad guy. If some date at college invites you up to his room to smoke a joint, you may or may not refuse. If he invites you up to his room to read the Bible, what do you think? If your girlfriend says she used to be a stripper, wow how empowering and cool! If she says she used to be a fundamentalist, you are likely to console her.

Even the friendships tend to view Christian faith as something like building model trains in your basement. It’s okay, but he really should grow out of it. As long as he doesn’t bring it up too often, or spend too much time on it, I can tolerate it.

It’s a little exaggeration, but there’s a lot of approbation about being a devout Christian, and many hide, deprecate, or mute that aspect of themselves to be around people. A lot of us have been bullied for our faith.

Almost every lovable character in almost every movie made in the US is a Christian, ya know. Almost every villain, too. I mean, I guess you are using “Christian” to mean “Protestant Evangelical Christian,” so in fact probably only a minority of the lovable or villainous characters in US movies are “Christian” by your definition, but that would be because Christians by your definition make up a minority of the population.

Really, you can’t have it both ways. You want there to be plenty of movie characters who are “Christians” but aren’t going around getting in the face of all the other characters about it and being all hateful/superior/smug/other-offensive-stereotype about it, but you won’t accept positive characters as “Christians” unless they place an undue emphasis on their religion and refuse to engage in any interactions that aren’t defined by “I am a Christian and you are also/not/whatever”, in which case they aren’t going to be all that loveable, because that’s pretty obnoxious behavior. Which most Christians (by anyone’s definition) I know don’t engage in most of the time, no matter how devout they are.

No, they aren’t, unless being Western automatically equals being Christian. I’m talking about characters who self-identify or are identified as them. If they don’t, how do you know what religious faith if any do they have? You can only go by what is revealed. Otherwise, James Bond, Ripley, or Harry Potter can be called Christians despite no evidence to the positive.

What is revealed is usually negative. To a surprising degree, both in fiction and in culture. Just talking about the faith is judgmental; following it seriously is never really shown as good. I’m just saying considering that we have to live with things like Ned Flanders, it’s a wonder that there isn’t more backlash and bunkering.

Well, I’m basing this on the fact that most citizens of the US self-identify as Christian. And I think it’s fair to say that Ripley by his behavior shows clearly that he isn’t. But as a non-Christian I think it’s pretty obvious that most characters in most US movies are intended to be read as Christians, or as people who consider themselves to be Christians. You can get all “no-true-Scotsman” about them, of course. So I take the actions of most characters in most movies to be connected with or in violation of a moral code, which for most of them will be grounded in Christianity. And, ya know, most people don’t walk around saying “I’m holding the door for you because I’m Church of Christ” or “I’m inviting you over to watch football because I’m Russian Orthodox” or whatever. But it’s there for them all the same.

Now, it is fair to say that movies do a poor job of showing the connection between religious faith (of any variety) and actions. And I would agree. But that’s a problem inherent in the medium, which can’t give many details of interiority without feeling all talky and boring as a piece of entertainment. But I don’t see it as a plot by moviemakers who are hostile to religion in general or to your religion in particular.

Why should a movie that is about aliens or drug kingpins or something else address the religion of its protagonists?

I think it’s interesting to see this conversation between a Christian and a Non-Christian (since that’s how NM is defining hirself, that’s the term I’ll use, even though I know s/he has a preferred self-designation).

The Christian sees Christians seldomly portrayed, and mostly depicted as bad when they are portrayed. The Non-Christian sees Christians always portrayed, and as a wide spectrum. This feeds into my whole theory of Yellow Volkswagon syndrome when discussing the popular culture’s views on Evangelical Christianity.

It also underscores the fact that we have got to stop looking to the popular culture for cosseting. Everyone hungers to see themselves portrayed in some way by the culture. I have yet to see any films about a disabled, overweight, perimenopausal autodidact Christian woman with a deep background in Judaica. Somehow, though, I manage to muddle through with an intact sense of self.

Perhaps it’s tied into my being overweight; you just get used to knowing that you won’t be depicted unless distastefully and so you look elsewhere for your sense of validation. I don’t know. Either way, I stand by what I said in the other comment. Being picked on is no reason to respond with invective or even violence.

I’m sorry for having been absent; we’ve got my office torn up for some repair work and I had more to say that my little iphone keyboard could handle.

At any rate…

I’m sorry, D.M, but even if you were totally right about everyone in the mainstream hating us and making us look bad in movies and tv shows and books, SO WHAT??

The same Bible that assures us salvation and heaven and all those other good things also tells us that we’ll be persecuted and mocked and derided and whatnot. It comes with the package. We can’t expect to sign on for the benefits and then gripe about the drawbacks even though we’ve been fully informed about said drawbacks. A “bunker mentality” is not excused by big meanies in the movies or comic books or whatever.

All that being said, I don’t think you’re correct. I think what has happened with all this is Yellow Volkswagon Syndrome. Folks notice it when it drives by, and so they think it drives by a lot. I’m not saying Ned Flanders, a character on a satirical and mean-spirited program that satirises everything from Christ to soda pop, is not occassionally annoying with the mirror he holds up to us. And I’m not denying that there are Bad Christians in police shows where the minister ends up being the serial killer, etc.

But I also can’t say that that every Christian everywhere is the bad guy. And even if that was the message that this culture sends, we ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO RESPOND TO THAT MESSAGE WITH ANGER AND FIGHTING.

Writers’ Advice

"Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window."
— William Faulkner